The Bee-Master of Warrilow. 



entrances, so that a high temperature is maintained 

 within, and the queens imagine summer is already ad- 

 vancing. Then they see the pea-flour coming in plenti- 

 fully, and conclude that the fields and hillsides are covered 

 with flowers ; for they never come out of the hives 

 except at swarming-time, and must judge of the year by 

 what they see around them. Then in a week or two we 

 shall put the spring-feeders on, and give each hive as 

 much syrup as the bees can take down ; and this, again, 

 leads the queens into the belief that the year's food- 

 supply has begun in earnest. The result is that the 

 winter lethargy in the hive is soon completely over- 

 thrown, the queens begin to lay unrestrictedly, and the 

 whole colony is forging on towards summer strength 

 long before there is any natural reason for it." 



We were stooping down, watching the bees at the 

 nearest hive. A little cloud of them was hovering in the 

 sunshine, heads towards the entrance, keeping up a 

 shrill jovial contented note as they flew. Others were 

 roving round with a vagrant, workless air, singing a low 

 desultory song as they trifled about among the crocuses, 

 passing from gleaming white to rich purple, then to gold, 

 and back again to white, just as the mood took them. In 

 the hive itself there was evidently a kind of spring-clean- 

 ing well in progress. Hundreds of the bees were bring- 

 ing out minute sand-coloured particles, which accumulated 

 on the alighting-board visibly as we watched. Now and 

 again a worker came backing out, dragging a dead bee 

 laboriously after her. Instantly two or three others 

 rushed to help in the task, and between them they 

 tumbled the carcass over the edge of the foot-board, 

 down among the grass below. Sometimes the burden 

 was of a pure white colour, like the ghost of a bee, perfect 

 in shape, with beady black eyes, and its colourless wings 

 folded round it like a cerecloth. Then it seemed to be 

 less weighty, and its carrier usually shouldered the grue- 

 some thing, and flew away with it high up into the sun- 

 shine, and swiftly out of view. 



"Those are the undertakers," said the bee-master, 

 ruminatively filling a pipe. " Their work is to carry the 

 dead out of the hive. That last was one of the New 

 Year's brood, and they often die in the cell like that, 



18 



